Yours, etc
by Sambuca Queen
Summary: Getting together with the love of his life would be easier if Lily didn’t prefer the Giant Squid to James. Luckily, James and his friends won't accept fate lying down. If it isn’t worth fighting for, it isn’t worth having. [No spoilers, HBP compatible]
1. Prologue

_Some preamble. _

_There are no spoilers for **Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince**. Even if you haven't finished the book yet, you don't have to worry about me giving away any plot details. At the same time, this story is compatible, for those of you who hate anything that is non-canon._

_This has been rated **T** for Teen. I have not chosen this rating arbitrarily. There will be some swearing and references to alcohol, sex, violenceand other adult themes. It is not a main focus of the story, but if such things bother you greatly, make note of this warning._

_Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, his parents, the other characters, the world, or basically anything you see in this story. It was all created by J. K. Rowling. _

_I hope you enjoy!_

* * *

**Prologue**

It is commonly accepted that all it takes for two young people to fall in love is to have them look deeply and soulfully into each other's eyes; to have them spend an amount of time together in each other's company all the whilst wondering why they find the person they loath so utterly, utterly attractive; or, barring that, to be locked in a small enclosed space until they either snog or kill each other. 

Most prefer the snogging.

James Potter, being the romantic that he was, looked upon the upcoming year as a great opportunity. After all, he was going to be the Head Boy to Lily Evans' Head Girl. Evans was the smartest, most beautiful girl attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in his not so humble opinion. He'd been pining for her for years now, and this year he would finally have his chance to show her what a great guy he was. He would win her over if it was the last thing he did.

This year, Lily Evans would fall in love with him.

Lily Evans, being the realist that she was, looked upon the upcoming year with deep dread. After all, she was going to be the Head Girl to James Potter's Head Boy. Potter was disruptive, disorderly, disagreeable and a general, all-around menace to the student body at Hogwarts. What Dumbledore had been thinking when he made Potter Head Boy, Lily would never know. She dreaded the coming year because she knew that Potter would take every opportunity to beg her to go out with him. After all, that was all he'd been doing for the last few years.

James Potter, her boyfriend? Over her dead body!

* * *

**In the next chapter:**

Dumbledore, being the enigma that he was to most students, declined to share his thoughts on the upcoming year. When asked about the subject, all he did was smile mysteriously and offer a sherbet lemon. What this might be code for, experts are still wondering to this day.

_  
Reviews welcomed and gushed over. Criticisms are carefully considered and appreciated. Flames are giggled over because they don't make sense._


	2. Letters

_This started as one thing and mutated into something else entirely. I hope you enjoy, and don't forget to review. _

_Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, his parents, the other characters, the world, or basically anything you see in this story. It was all created by J. K. Rowling. _

* * *

**Chapter 1**

Evans,

Rumour has it that Hogwarts is having a Yule Ball this year. Go with me to it?

Yrs sincerely,  
Jas. Potter

_Potter,_

_I told you once I'd rather date the Giant Squid than you. This time I asked—he's available, so you're out._

_Leave me alone,  
__Lily Evans_

Evans,

The Giant Squid is not an appropriate date. You're Head Girl, you ought to know better. You should be setting an example for the rest of the school.

Thinking of you,  
Jas. Potter

_Potter,_

_Setting an example? Do you ever listen to yourself speak? Keep that in mind next time you set about doing something completely and utterly inappropriate for the Head Boy to be even thinking about._

_Wondering how you even got to be Head Boy,_

_Lily Evans  
_Evans,

I set a very good example, thank you very much.

Wishing you were here,  
Jas. Potter

_Potter,_

_You're delusional_

_Working on her Charms homework,  
__Lily Evans_

Evans,

Me? Delusional? I'll have you know that Pa—Sirius has almost entirely stopped giving Peeves water balloons to set loose on the ickle first years because of the example I set. Well, usually refrains from giving Peeves water balloons or other arsenal. All right, if you must know, he's cut back on it and that's the truth. In fact, he didn't give Peeves anything remotely bomb-like last Wednesday because I'd asked him not to, so that ought to count at the very least.

Besides, I'm not the one trying to take an aquatic animal to a school ball, which is the point we ought to be focusing on right now. How could he even breathe the air? Didn't you think of that? I asked McGonagall and she said that under no circumstances is any student allowed to bring a beast to the Ball.

Yrs very maturely,  
Jas. Potter

_Potter,_

_Once again, you've proved my point. Delusional. Utterly, utterly delusional. _

_I'm not taking the Giant Squid to the Yule Ball. I never planned to in the first place. And now McGonagall thinks you fancy the Giant Squid. _

_Sod off,  
__Lily Evans_

Evans,

I wasn't asking for my own sake, I was asking for yours!

Missing you,  
Jas. Potter

_Potter,_

_Does she know that?_

_Decidedly not missing you,  
__Lily Evans_

Evans,

Of course she does. What else could she think?

Yrs truly,  
Jas. Potter

_My Clueless Potter,_

_That you could even ask such a question proves to me that you really are a clueless berk. If a boy comes asking about the rules surrounding bringing an animal to a school dance as a date, a professor will naturally start locking up his or her sheep. Just in case._

_The cluelessness part, believe it or not, is almost as bad as the berk part when it comes to potential boyfriend material. Though even if the cluelessness part could be overcome, the fact that you are you counts heavily against you._

_Shaking my head,  
__Lily_

Evans,

Ha! You called me yours! So you will go to the dance with me!

Happily yrs,  
Jas. Potter

_Potter,_

_Did you even read my letter? Or did your brain block out any bad news? It must block out large part of our acquaintance, then, since it always turns into a disappointment for you._

_Despairing,  
__Lily Evans_

Evans,

Of course I read it! How else would I know that you think of me as yours?

Yrs lovingly,  
Jas. Potter

_Potter,_

_Delusional._

_Evans_

Evans,

That's all you ever say. It doesn't win the argument, no matter how often you repeat it. Sirius does the same thing, and it doesn't win him the arguments either.

No it doesn't, Padfoot.

Just because you're calling me a wanker doesn't mean you win the argument.

Stop saying that, Padfoot.

You have to use more words if you want me to be convinced. It's not an argument otherwise.

No, I'm not a wanker.

Stop it.

Git.

Sorry, Evans, I was using a Quick Quotes and Sirius side-tracked me from this.

Yrs, &c.,  
Jas. Potter

_Potter,_

_If you insist on persisting in sending me these letters, at least have the decency to write a second copy instead of forcing me to read a one-sided argument between yourself and Black. I hear them often enough during class (which, might I add, is disruptive and a good example of the way that you don't set a good example as Head Boy) and have no wish for them to intrude upon my privacy, too._

_Fed up,  
__Lily Evans_

Evans,

You never answered my question. Will you go to the Ball with me?

Yr Jas. Potter

_Not my Potter,_

_Firstly, I have answered already. Secondly, there is no Ball. The rumour was only that: a rumour. There's no Ball so therefore I cannot accompany you to this non-existent Ball._

_Enough is enough,  
__Lily Evans_

Evans,

But if there had been a Ball, would you have gone with me?

Wishing you were here,  
Jas. Potter

_Potter,_

_Yes. Yes I would have. Unfortunately, there is no Ball, so I'm afraid our date can never be._

_Slightly intoxicated,  
__Lily Evans_

Evans,

It isn't nice to tease the Head Berk so. Prongs has been dancing around the room and generally making an ass of himself all evening since he received your last letter. He actually believes you're willing to go out with him. If you thought he was bad before, just wait until you see him now.

Sirius Black

_Black,_

_Please tell me you're kidding. Surely Potter has half an ounce of sense at the very least._

_Evans_

Evans,

Sorry, you're out of luck. Our dear Prongs Berk sincerely believes you . He is already planning the wedding, in fact. I would run while you still have the chance. I'll try to curse him into some sense, but I'm afraid that's not going to happen any time soon.

Curiously, what do you think of lilies for your wedding bouquet? Prongs seems to think he's cottoned on to something incredibly clever in remembering you share a name with a certain type of flower. Did you know he has identified over thirteen varieties of lilies so far? Do you know how boring it is to listen to Herbology lectures even in class, let alone late at night when a bloke is trying his hardest not to think about school at all.

Sirius Black

_Black,_

_Kill me. Kill me now._

_Evans_

_

* * *

_

**In the next chapter: **

_From the Desk of Jas. Potter_  
To Do:

Learn Carbon-Copy Charm in order to make multiple copies of Evans' acceptance letter. Need:  
- one copy for prosperity;  
- one for safekeeping (so she doesn't spontaneously forget, like last time);  
- three copies to disprove those betting against me (four if Sirius spontaneously sets one on fire—again);  
- four to post on notice boards in each house; plus  
- one more to post on notice board in teacher's lounge.


	3. Self Delusions

_I probably won't continue to post at this rate, but at the moment I have the better part of the next three chapters written, which is a definite plus. Not guaranteeing any timeline for them to be out. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy, and don't forget to review!_

_Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, his parents, the other characters, the world, or basically anything you see in this story. It was all created by J. K. Rowling. _

* * *

**Chapter Two**

It was only so long that a bloke could watch his best mate prance around the room, making a complete and total idiot out of himself because he mistakenly believed that his longtime crush had actually consented to go out on a date with him before said bloke had to intervene and crush said best mate's spirits.

For Sirius Black, that time was sixty-four seconds, which included the thirty-seven seconds it took for him to determine the situation, laugh, scoff, ask Prongs again, demand to see the letter in question, laugh and scoff again, then realize just what exactly was going on. The next two hours were spent trying to convince James thatwhat he thoughtwas going on really wasn't.

"Prongs, it's all a cruel joke," Sirius said.

"It isn't," James insisted. "Evans wouldn't do that to me. She likes me."

"She hates your guts." He paused here, to reconsider. "Although, come to think of it, I'm not sure that's entirely true. I think she quite likes your guts, or at least would quite like them if they were spilled outside your body. As they are, nicely packaged up inside your body, she's not entirely fond of them."

James shook his head stubbornly, refusing to listen to Sirius' sound advice. "You're just jealous."

"What?" Sirius yelped. "Me? Jealous? Of _Evans_? You're crazier than I thought. I can't stand Evans."

"Why not?" James challenged. In the face of the perceived insult, he forgot for the moment that he wasn't supposed to be encouraging Sirius to like his crush. "What's wrong with her?"

"What isn't wrong with her?" Sirius asked. It was dangerous grounds, but he never played safe. Playing safe went against everything that made him a Gryffindor or a Black. "She's the most annoying creature I've ever laid eyes on. And you've met my family, so you know that's saying a lot.

James pulled his wand. "Take that back," he said slowly and deliberately. He wasn't fooling around.

Sirius just rolled his eyes, his own wand resting lazily at his side. "Relax, Prongs. She's not worth getting worked up over."

"She is," James insisted. His wand didn't drop, although he grip relaxed when Sirius didn't respond.

"She's playing with your feelings!" Sirius waved the letter in James' face for proof, but it wasn't as an effective a reminder as he'd hoped.

"She said she'd go out with me." James' eye glazed over again at the memory.

"She was lying!"

"Evans wouldn't do that," James defended.

"I have news for you, mate. She just did."

James adopted a slightly condescending smile that irked Sirius almost more than the fact that Evans was playing with James' heart did. "Padfoot, how many girlfriends have you had?" he asked.

Sirius shrugged. "I lost count ages ago. You know that."

"Snogging a girl doesn't make her your girlfriend," James said.

Sirius shrugged again. "In that case," he paused and started to counted on his fingers, although they both knew it was just for the act. He gave up quickly, pasting on a wide, lazy smile. "I still haven't the slightest clue."

"You've never even gone out with a girl for more than one date. Why do you think you know anything about matters of the heart?"

James' words were accurate enough, even if not completely true. However, Sirius wasn't going to correct himJames. If he were going to mention her, he would have told James ages ago. He wasn't going to break his vow of silence now. Not over something that he wasn't sure he even knew the point of.

Sirius quickly pushed those thoughts out of his mind. He was talking about James' love life (or lack thereof) here, not his own love life (or lack thereof). He needed to focus on James' problem.

"I know enough to know when Evans is jerking you around," he said. "I know enough to know when a girl isn't interested. I know enough to know she's just going to hurt you."

James dismissed this warning, as he always dismissed the warning. Lily Evans could do no wrong in his eyes. Sirius and the others had tried to wean James off of that mystifying notion, but so far they had not been successful. Sometimes it didn't matter too much (except, of course, to their sanity, which was greatly threatened when James wouldn't shut up about how Evans could perform miracles with her wand, exchanging water for wine without as much as a blink of the eye) but other times it could be fatal (such as when Evans had mentioned to James that she really did miss listening to her Muggle tunes on the wireless when at Hogwarts, causing James to fiddle around with an old radio he found on their summer holidays, almost electrifying both himself and Sirius in his attempts to modify it).

"You're just saying that because you don't think I should go out with her."

"I'm just saying that because it's true," Sirius corrected. "And you shouldn't go out with her."

"Too bad; I am." James resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at Sirius to finish the comment, but only barely. The tip of his tongue passed beyond his lips before he remembered that he was very grown up and mature, and that mature grown-ups did not do such things as stick out their tongues at their mates, even if their mates greatly deserved such treatment.

Sirius sighed, long and dramatically. He wondered what it would take to drill the point into James' head. He wondered _if_ there was anything that could do so. "You aren't," he said simply.

James shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry you feel that way, Padfoot," he started to say.

"Feel _what_ way?" Sirius interrupted what he knew would have been a long speech otherwise.

"Upset," James said simply.

Sirius didn't deny that he was upset, but he knew it wasn't for the reasons James thought. "I'll stop being upset when you admit to the truth."

"The truth is that Evans agreed to go out with me."

"The truth is that Evans is not going out with you."

"She said so herself!" James argued, refusing to budge from his self-delusion.

"What would it take for you to believe me?" Sirius asked, frustrated that the argument was still going on. It wasn't like James to be this stubborn. At least not against Sirius.

"There isn't anything that would convince me you're right about her, because you aren't. Evans isn't like that."

"Why don't you go ask her?" Sirius suggested in desperation.

"Fine. I will." With a decide flounce, James turned on his heel and headed for Gryffindor Tower, hollering Evans' name the entire way.

* * *

**In the next chapter:**

"She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not." James carefully plucked petals from the flower he'd stolen from Greenhouse Five. However, when he landed on "She loved me as much as she loves a Green Martian named Marvin," all he could do was yell out "_PADFOOT!_"

Sirius just laughed.


	4. Ugly Truths

_I'm aiming for two to three posts per week right now. However, they probably won't be spread out evenly, because that's just the way I am. This will probably change when I start work._

_Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, his parents, the other characters, the world, or basically anything you see in this story. It was all created by J. K. Rowling._

* * *

**Chapter Three**

Lily Evans was sitting in the Common Room, purportedly doing homework, but in reality gossiping with her friends and enjoying a nice, relaxing Saturday afternoon. From the horror stories the professors were passing around, as well as second-hand experience of those seventh-years in previous years, there weren't going to be too many more lazy afternoons to be spent that year.

James paused when he saw her, taking in her profile. She really was beautiful, and no matter how many times it happened, the sight of her always took his breath away for a moment.

The effect was usually ruined when she opened her mouth (what came out was almost inevitably some insult or other abuse directed at him), but James tried not to dwell on that. That was before, this was now.

"Evans!" he called out to get her attention.

She closed her eyes briefly, taking a breath to centre herself. "Hullo, Potter." Beside her, her friends didn't quiet down, as James had hoped, but instead started to giggle and whisper into each other's ears. It was unnerving to have so many eyes watching him, laughing at him, but James ignored them the best he could. From her seat in the middle of the crowd, Evans did the same.

"I'm glad I found you," James said, throwing himself down onto a chair beside her, paying no mind to the squawk Irune Giorno, a fellow seventh-year, gave him when he practically sat in her lap. He also ignored the subsequent glares she sent drilling into the back of his head when he didn't move despite the not-so-subtle pokes she was giving him.

James ignored a lot of things when Lily Evans was involved.

"What do you want, Potter?" she asked in a long, suffering voice that James couldn't reconcile with the fact that, as his potential girlfriend, she should be delighted to see him.

"The letter you sent me," James said, producing the same letter, trying to straighten out the creases that came from clutching it possessively and obsessively ever since he'd received it. He wasn't too successful at this because at the same time he was also trying to wave it in her front of her face on the off chance that she wasn't sure which letter he meant.

"Oh, God," Evans muttered, looking at James as if he were a boggart, bringing her worst fears to life right before her eyes.

The giggling picked up again, while Columbine, ever the gossip, demanded, "What letter? What haven't you been telling us, Lily?"

James tried to explain. "This letter. She sent it last night, agreeing—"

Evans cut him off before he could go any further. "Look, Potter. I'm sorry about that. And I would appreciate it if you looked the other way. Just this once. Please? Forgot about it."

James faltered. "Forgot about it?"

With one last look to her giggling friends, who didn't look like they knew the rules of feminine solidarity at that moment, Evans got up and yanked James to the side, out of earshot of everyone. James noticed Sirius had followed him down, standing a little ways away with his arms folded across his chest. He was watching the pair intensely, but, strangely enough for Sirius, made no attempt to come over and eavesdrop on them.

"Look, Potter, I'm sorry," Lily said, dragging his attention away from Sirius' strange behaviour. "I shouldn't have done that, and especially not after lecturing you about responsibilities. If it's any consolation, my head hurt like you wouldn't believe this morning. And, except for that letter, no one knows. I wasn't wandering through the castle, or anything, so no one knows anything. Except you."

James finally understood what she was getting at, and with a quick, inconspicuous glance at the paper he finally noticed the way she signed off: "Slightly intoxicated." It wasn't, as he'd first believed (had forced himself to believe—now that he was facing the truth about Lily's letter, he had to face the truth about how he had been deluding himself in the first place), her admitting to being intoxicated by the thought of going out with him, but rather her admitting to being intoxicated after having consumed one too many alcoholic drinks.

James could feel the bottom of his stomach drop out and he tried his best not to let the devastation show on his face. From the puzzled look Evans was giving him, he wasn't entirely successful.

"Don't worry about it," he muttered. "It's no problem. No problem at all."

"Potter…" Evans didn't follow it up, but James could tell she wasn't buying his forced nonchalance.

"No, really," James tried to insist. He had been stupid, but she didn't have to know that much. She didn't have to know what he'd deluded himself into thinking. She didn't have to know that he thought she was serious.

Evans still looked so uncertain that James found he could no longer look directly at her. Instead, he sought out Sirius, who was still standing a few feet away. He was now visibly holding himself back in anger, gripping his wand so tightly that his entire hand was white with tension. The nails of his other hand were digging into his flesh, but Sirius didn't seem to notice this even though it was painfully obvious to James.

Sirius was a Dr. Filibuster's Fabulous No-Heat Wet-Start Fireworks and if James didn't stop him, he was going to go off in the very near future. Whatever else James was feeling towards Evans right then, he couldn't let Sirius go after her in a deluded attempt at helping James.

For Evans' sake (and for his own—it was embarrassing to be caught in such a delusion, being the butt of a joke even if it wasn't meant as one), James tried to relax. He even plastered on a fake smile, though it probably didn't fool Evans or Sirius. Hopefully it would save him some face with the rest of the Common Room (there were so many Gryffindors… James had never noticed that before).

"I just wanted to, just wanted to see that everything was all right. Can't have both the Head Girl and Head Boy acting up, after all." Was it his imagination, or was his voice a little hysterical?

Shaking his head, hoping that would clear it, James tried again. "Just, well no one saw you, so there's no harm. So no problem. Really. I won't tell anyone. You're allowed to have fun everyone once in awhile." He was babbling. Evans was giving him a weird look that he couldn't decipher. He needed to stop.

"Right." James stood. He quickly tucked the letter into his pocket, although not for safekeeping this time. As soon as he was out of sight, he was going to rip it to shreds. He only had just enough dignity left not to do it now, in front of the entire Common Room so that everyone would know just how utterly, completely _stupid_ he had been in thinking that Lily Evans might actually want to go out with him. "I'll see you then."

James hurried off to his room.

* * *

**In the next chapter:**

Lily watched James run away. "What's his problem?" she asked, confused.

"You," Sirius said nastily.

"No one was asking you, Black."

Sirius gave her the two-fingered salute before following his best friend upstairs, leaving Lily in the Common Room wondering what on Earth was with Potter this time. She tried to put it out of her mind—most likely it was some prank or another and she would find out soon enough when it blew up in his face—but couldn't seem to let the matter go completely.

She wondered what was wrong with herself.

* * *

_Reviews (criticisms, etc.) very much appreciated. I try to get back to all my reviewers by e-mail, but not all of you have working e-mail addresses. So thank you to everyone who's reviewed so far._


	5. Hazel Eyes

_Just to warn you all, things are going to get worse before they get better, but there is still hope. In any case, I'm glad people are enjoying it. I'm certainly enjoying writing it._

* * *

**Chapter Four**

Irune waited until Columbine had led her flock of gigglers away before she confronted Lily. "What was that about?"

Lily played dumb. "What was what about?"

"You know what I'm talking about. That thing between you and Potter."

"Oh, that." As if it could have been anything else.

"Right, that," Irune mimicked. "So? Tell me."

Lily sighed, pushing her hair back from her face. "I honestly don't know."

"Did he ask you out?"

Making a face, Lily said, "Don't you mean, did he ask me out again? Does he do anything else?"

"So he did ask you out," Irune said, satisfied. "And by the look on his face, you didn't turn him down gently. Don't you ever get tired of dashing the poor boy's hopes?"

"Poor boy?" Lily asked. "Potter? We _are_ talking about the same person here, aren't we? Arrogant, pigheaded troublemaker who thinks he's God's gift to women every time he messes up his hair?"

Shaking her head slightly, for she'd heard it all before, heard it many times from Lily, Irune corrected the description of James Potter. "No, I'm talking about the guy who is so hopelessly in love with you that he's trying his hardest to turn himself around in hopes that you'll finaaly notice him and finally consent to a date."

"I notice him!" Lily objected. "How could I not?"

Irune ignored her, continuing: "Anyone else would have given in to the inevitable ages ago." Whether she meant any other boy would have stopped liking Lily, or any other girl would have succumbed to Potter's so-called charms, Irune didn't clarify and Lily didn't ask.

"Surely you're joking," scoffed Lily.

"I'm Irune, not Shirley."

Lily just rolled her eyes. "You're worse than Black with his horrid 'serious Sirius' bit."

Gasping in mock horror, Irune said, "Worse than Black? Oh, no! That is dreadful indeed! Take it back."

"I'll take it back if you take back that bit about Potter."

"I'd take it back if it weren't true," Irune said stubbornly.

"It isn't true," Lily insisted.

"You're in deniable."

"I am not."

Lily cursed as soon as her denial was out of her mouth. She knew it sounded like a lame attempt to deflect attention from her secret crush, as if she were a third-year with her first crush again. She didn't have a crush on Potter, secret or otherwise.

Luckily, Irune didn't decide to pursue the argument. Shrugging her shoulders, she said, "I don't know why you think he's so bad. Personally, being able to stare into those yummy chocolate eyes all day would be worth having to deal with some of the more extremes of his personality."

"His eyes are hazel, not brown," Lily corrected absently. Irune's laughter told her of her folly.

Lily rolled her own bright emerald green eyes. "Just because I know what colour his eyes are doesn't mean anything."

"No," Irune agreed, although in a manner that suggested that she was saying the absolute opposite of what she was feeling. "It only means that you know the colour of his eyes."

"Exactly," said Lily, only too aware that her answer was hollow.

"And it has nothing to do with often you look at those hazel eyes, gazing deeply into his soul."

Lily frowned. "Exactly." Although it was the same word as before, her tone was significantly colder this time.

"And it certainly has nothing to do with the fact that you're really rather fond of that set of hazel eyes, right? Surely that isn't why you spend hours on end gazing into them, deciding the exact shade they are."

Lily outright ignored Irune this time. Such outrageous slander didn't deserve a response. Unfortunately, Irune didn't take her silence as the disdain she meant to project, but rather as embarrassment. Smiling widely, as if she knew something that Lily didn't, Irune said, "When are you going to just admit that Potter isn't so bad?"

"Potter is that bad," Lily said firmly. "He's immature."

"He's matured enough to be Head Boy this year," Irune countered.

Lily continued as if Irune didn't have a point. "His friends are horrid."

"Though you must admit that he sticks by them through thick or thin, and has been loyal to them for years," Irune pointed out. "Not many would do the same."

"He's just so arrogant!" Lily shook her head in frustration. She didn't want to be having this conversation.

"And you're stubborn. You'd make a great match."

"No, we wouldn't! Why is everyone against me in this? Why am I such a bitch for not wanting to go out with him? I never asked for this attention, and nothing I do seems to stop it. It's not my fault!"

Irune gave the question careful consideration, chewing on her bottom lip as she regarded Lily. It was more than Lily usually got—the rolling of the eyes and the snapping of a hand open and shut imitating a mouth that was talking too much and saying nothing new. As such, Lily appreciated the gesture, even if she didn't appreciate Irune's next words. "Would it really be so bad if you gave him a chance?"

Before Lily could think up a suitable retort (somehow saying "Yes" didn't seem to be enough), Irune gathered up the school books that hadn't been touched all afternoon and got up. "I'm going to the library. Kettleburn assigned three feet for Monday, and I can't do any work in the Common Room. Think about what I said. If you keep this up, pretty soon Potter is going to give up on you."

"But I want him to give up on me. I don't want him to pursue me anymore."

If Irune heard Lily, she gave no indication of it, continuing on her way out the portrait hole without so much as a twitch.

Lily's words seemed oddly hollow even to her own ears.

**

* * *

****In the next chapter:**

Lily woke up suddenly, sitting up straight in bed. A random "No, professor, I said the green monkey not the blue antelope" was the only response she got to the disturbance she made, so she felt safe to ignore it.

"I'm in love with James Potter," Lily marvelled.

It was difficult to say how Lily had come to that conclusion from her dream, which involved McGonagall scolding her for not properly conjugating her Latin in order to understand the theory behind the magical properties of the number three (for McGonagall was the Arithmancy professor in this dream, never mind that Arithmancy did not use spells nor did Lily actually take Arithmancy, which her conscious self suspected hadmore to it than the magical properties of the numbers three, seven and otherwise) until she and James were awashed in an eerie green light that ultimately woke her up. But not necessary to explain since she fell back to sleep immediately and remembered nothing of it—the dream or the declaration—when morning came.


	6. A Resolution

_As always, the characters do not belong to me. They were create by J. K. Rowling. _

_I told you it was going to get much worse before it got better. Don't forget to review. I like just about everything people say, be it good or bad. Okay, maybe like isn't the right word, but I think I know what you mean._

* * *

**Chapter Five**

Peter and Remus' study time was interrupted by first James and then Sirius stomping up the stairs and into their room, both of them slamming the door heavily. James continued marching over to his bed, where he drew the curtains closed and refused to speak. Sirius mimicked him, marching over to James' bed, except he drew the curtains back open and addressed the room rather than hide himself in sullen silence.

"We're going out," he announced.

"We're going out?" Remus questioned.

"We're going out," Sirius repeated firmly.

Sighing, because he'd hoped that Sirius might volunteer more information without having to go through the equivalent of a root canal, which was as painful and annoying in the wizarding world as it was in the Muggle world, surprisingly enough, Remus asked, "Why are we going out?"

"Where are we going?" Peter asked. Although he was happier to accept Sirius' commands with minimum question, he didn't like entering potentially hazardous situations without some warning. He had learned from experience that going out with Sirius was a potentially hazardous situation.

"Sod off," was James' contribution to the conversation. He tried to yank his bed curtains closed again, but Sirius wouldn't let him.

"We're going out," Sirius announced again, his tone brooking no argument. "We're going to Hogsmeade. We're going to get ourselves drunk. We're going to have a fun time, who cares about anyone else at this school."

Peter, as always, didn't pick up on the underlying tension. "Hogsmeade?" he questioned. "But it's not a Hogsmeade weekend. I thought that we weren't breaking the rules that much this year so that Evans wouldn't get so mad at J—at Prongs."

Sirius fixed him with a glare that made Peter wish he had a set of curtains that he could draw around himself, but otherwise didn't answer. Remus, who was a little quicker on the uptake, said, "Are you sure getting drunk is a good idea?"

"Getting drunk is always a good idea," Sirius said.

So it was that the four boys ended up at he Hog's Head that Saturday night, since The Three Broomsticks wouldn't let them drink, having made a pact with Hogswart's authorities not to let students drink alcohol in their establishment to the best of their ability. Surprisingly enough, perhaps a testament as to how pretty Rosmerta the barmaid actually was, The Three Broomsticks still did fairly good business even if all the students knew they had to go to the Hog's Head to trick the bartender (or else play into his apathy) into thinking that they could legally drink alcohol in excess.

"Girls are horrid," James announced.

"Hear, hear," Sirius agreed, raising his mug of beer for the toast. Remus and Peter raised their own glasses in response, although Peter did feel the need to modify Sirius' words.

"They aren't all bad. Melinda's not bad."

"Just because you have a girlfriend doesn't mean the rest of us should suffer," James said sourly.

"Really, Wormtail," Sirius chided. "Tonight's for commiserating with James, to make him realize that there are better birds than bloody Evans out there. Now is not the time to remind us that some pathetic second year is willing to put out for you."

"She's in fourth year," Peter said, his cheeks turning red. No matter how often Sirius teased him, he could never get used to the other boy's mocking nature.

"She's still only going out with you because she's too young to know better," Sirius said. Remus and James ignore him, knowing he was always that bitter when he didn't have a girlfriend of his own, but Peter would have continued his defence if James hadn't spoken up.

"I don't want another girl."

"This isn't another scheme to win Lily's heart, is it?" Remus asked, trying his best not to sound impatient. James had come up with too many schemes to win Lily's heart over the years and not one of them had come even close to succeeding.

"No," James said quickly. "It's not. In fact, I'm going to give up on Lily completely."

Stunned silence greeted this announcement.

Finally, Sirius spoke. "It's about time!"

Remus had a different take on the matter. "Are you sure? After all, you've devoted two years to trying to win her over."

"And to what end?" James wanted to know.

"You can't give up on her," Peter objected. "You love her!"

"She's a bitch!" Sirius exclaimed. "She plays with your heart, Prongs. She doesn't give a damn about you, but worst, she keeps on jerking you around. All I can say is it's about damned time you came to your senses about her."

"It isn't as simple as that," Remus argued. "James wouldn't have been after her for two years if he could give up on her so easily."

"He can't give her up!" Peter repeated. "He loves her!"

"He _should_ give up on her, easy or not," Sirius persisted, stubbornly. "She's a _bitch_. She doesn't care about him, not in the least bit. She doesn't care that she's jerking him around, she doesn't care if she actually hurts him. She doesn't deserve Prongs' love, if you ask me."

"Love isn't as easy as that," Remus argued. "If it were rational, everyone's lives would be so much easier. But it isn't, and they aren't."

"James isn't going to give up on Evans. Not really." Peter was desperately trying to make his words true. "He's been in love with her forever. He can't just suddenly give her up. That wouldn't be right. He _loves_ her!"

"Hey!" James voice carried even over the din of the rest of the bar, including the trio in the back who were playing a game of knuts that involved a lot more yelling and screaming than was warranted by the act of trying to get a knut to bounce into a glass. "Stop telling me what I ought or ought not to feel! It's my life, and I make the decisions."

Sirius wasn't as chastised by the outburst as the other two boys were. "Are you going to choose what's good for you? The right decision?"

James nodded resolutely. "From this point onward, I'm swearing off of Lily Evans."

Even the trio playing knuts silenced long enough to listen to James' next and final word on the subject.

"Forever."

* * *

**In the next chapter:**

"Sirius, I appreciate that you're trying to help me get over Evans, but you don't have to try to set me up," James said, trying to be reasonable. Even if it was an uphill battle.

"But Melody Smye is a perfect match for you!" Sirius objected.

James sighed a long suffering sigh. He'd been at this for too long already. "She's going out with Rabastan Lestrange.

"Theresia Berardo?" suggested Sirius.

"Is in second year." James' voice was frosty.

"Jermaine Kibble!" Sirius asked.

"Is a _guy_!" James exclaimed.

Sirius scratched his head and went back to his list of single people available at Hogwarts that weren't Lily Evans. He would come up with a better alternative to Lily Evans if he had to work his way through the entire school first.


	7. Morning After Blahs

_I don't normally reply to reviewers in the story proper, preferring e-mail, because it makes the part seem deceptively long, but I thought there were a couple things I should address. To make up for this deception, I've actually made this part slightly longer than usual, since it would be especially mean to have most of this part made up of author's notes instead of story._

_Which brings me to point one._ **Chapter Length** _Right now, when I'm writing the new part, I aim to reach a thousand words before going over it to make minor corrections. Yes, I realize this is short. Mostly because I'm enjoying having these short; it feels like I'm accomplishing more for some reason. Plus, I can post faster with shorter chapters. Longer chapters means that I couldn't post more than once a week. However, when I reach the end of my current planned outline (two "letters" chapters from now) I'll stop and reconsider this position._

_Which brings me to point two._ **Posting Schedule** _It was the May 24 weekend when all of a sudden I realized that despite the fact the weather didn't seem like it, summer was here. Which means that I have a bunch of other things I'm supposed to be doing/writing. Oops? Don't worry; that doesn't mean I'm abandoning this, just that I'll be writing/posting new parts roughly every four days until some of my other things clear up/get finished._

_Which doesn't logically bring me to point three, but it's still a fun way to phrase things. _**Rating **_I've posted a note on this in the first chapter for future readers, actually, but I'll repeat it here. I chose the rating for a reason. I will continue to have the occasional character swearing, making references to sex, alcohol and other themes that might be considered more mature. It shouldn't get worse than it was in the previous chapter, though._

_Lastly,_ **Why is Lily a bitch?**_ I'm not sure if people are wondering why Sirius keeps on calling her that (the answer is that Sirius is very protective of James and is unfairly rough on her) or whether she's actually coming across as a Grade A Bitch in my work. If it's the latter, I apologize and will try to work on that. It was never my intention to make her come off as a bitch, so I'll try to work harder at making her character more sympathetic in the future. (PS - Any comments you have on this point would be greatly appreciated.)_

_As always, if you have any questions you want to ask me directly, either sign your review or else send me an e-mail directly._ sambucaqueen at hotmail

* * *

**Chapter Six**

Hangovers had different effects on different people. There was Remus, whose werewolf physiology allowed him to process alcohol faster than most humans could, and who therefore never suffered hangovers because he couldn't get drunk enough to do so. There was Peter, who could drink and drink and drink and never get so much as the morning after blahs, much to the disgust of everyone who knew him.

Then there were James and Sirius, who exchanged sleeping habits after they'd had a little too much to drink. James would toss and turn for a couple hours until he was forced to admit defeat. He was always out of the room at the crack of dawn on those days, forced to thud down to the kitchen to see if the house elves' offer of orange juice could do anything to help his violent stomach.

Sirius, on the other hand, passed out and couldn't be woken by the coming of Voldemort himself. The other boys speculated that he drank only so that he could get some sleep from time to time, normally being an incurable insomniac. He could take the Draught of Living Death and only nap for an hour or two, before waking up again, ready to run a marathon, or enter a Quidditch match, or just to generally annoy all others who needed more than an average of two hours sleep a night.

That's how it got to be that early the next morning, when Peter and Remus woke up at their normal time, a tad early for a Sunday morning but nothing too drastic, James was long gone and Sirius was currently trying to burrow a hole into his mattress on the mistaken belief that if he hid his head deep enough, the pain would go away. Or maybe it was just that his head would disappear and take the pain with it.

He hadn't thought the matter through completely. Thinking hurt.

So did noise, which was a pity because Peter and Remus were making an awful lot of it.

"Do you think James is actually going to give up on Evans?" Peter asked nervously, making sure to keep his voice down. A hungover Sirius was not a happy Sirius, and even a happy Sirius made him nervous sometimes.

"I don't know," Remus admitted. "He sounded very upset last night, more so than he ever has before."

"But he can't just give up on her!" Peter exclaimed.

"I have news for you, Wormtail," Sirius grumbled. "He did. Now can we stop talking and let me go back to bashing my brains out in peace?"

"I don't know why you drink so much," Remus said to Sirius, happy for the chance to get away from Peter's obsession on James getting together with Lily. "You know how you're going to feel in the morning."

Sirius poked his head out from under his covers in order to give Remus a dirty glare. "Because I'm an idiot. A daft idiot. There, are you happy? But not as daft or as idiotic as Wormtail here."

"What did I do?" Peter demanded.

"Will you not shut up!"

"Sirius, leave Peter alone," Remus said. "It's hardly his fault you aren't feeling well this morning." Sirius grumbled, but he didn't argue with Remus.

"And Peter?" Peter turned to look at Remus to see what he had to say. "Don't antagonize Sirius. Just leave him alone. You know he's always horrid the morning after."

Peter wasn't as willing to let things go. "But I didn't _do_ anything!" he protested.

"Just let it go," Remus repeated, rubbing his forehead between his eyes, as if the conversation was invoking a headache in him as well. If Sirius had deigned to come up from under the covers (which he'd hid himself under again as soon as people stopped talking directly at him), he would have been oddly gratified to see Remus do that. He was of the firm opinion that misery loved company, at least when he was the misery in question.

"But what are we going to do about James?" Peter asked, not having forgotten about that part of the conversation, either.

"What's there to do?" Sirius asked, the words slightly muffled, but still fairly easy to understand. "Celebrate because he's finally come to his senses? Actually, that sounds like a good idea."

"I think you celebrated a little too hard last night," Remus said, a little sharply.

"And that's why I think I need to celebrate again today," Sirius said. "Hair of the dog. Wait, does that make sense? 'cuz I am a dog, and all that. Or am a dog sometimes. What bites dogs? Other than Moony, but that's just because he doesn't have any humans to snap at. Besides, hair of the werewolf just doesn't sound the same."

"It's not even nine o'clock in the morning!" Remus' sensibilities were shocked.

Sirius flipped up the covers, sitting up. He regretted the sudden movement immediately, slumping against the headboard. "I didn't say I was going to have a drink, just that it would be a great improvement on the way I'm feeling now. Especially since you two insist on going on about a problem that doesn't exist and keep me from sleeping."

"You keep us from sleeping all the time," Peter argued back.

"Do you ever shut up?" Sirius snapped.

"That isn't fair, Sirius," said Peter. "It's my room, too. I'm allowed to talk if you are."

"You're only allowed to talk if you say something sensible."

Before the argument could escalate any further, Remus broke in. He gently said, "If that were a rule, then no one would ever talk in this room. Not Peter, not yourself, Sirius. Not even James or myself."

Sirius folded his arms, grumpily, then changed the subject abruptly. "Is there any water? Where's a house elf when you need one?"

"You know they don't like being seen," Remus reminded him. "And no, there's no water. You'll have to go get some." He didn't offer to fetch some for Sirius, and neither did Peter, though he might have normally, because the shorter boy was still smarting from Sirius' unnecessarily harsh words.

Sirius got up. "I have to piss, anyway," he said crudely, still too hungover. Once he got some water into him and returned to the room, Remus was hoping that he would be feeling better and less snappish. In the meantime, he and Peter would be able to continue their conversation without interruption.

They waited for Sirius to leave before starting up again.

"I don't think there is anything we can do for James," Remus said, referring to Peter's worry over James' declaration the previous night.

"But we have to," Peter insisted. "We can't just let him throw it all away."

"Throw all what away?" Remus made a face. "As much as I hate to agree with Sirius on this point, it's not like Lily ever encouraged James' feelings in any way. Quite the opposite, in fact."

"That doesn't matter," Peter said, waving his hand as if to dismiss an insignificant fact. "What matters is that James has liked her for almost two years now. He can't just suddenly give up, not when he's so close?"

"You think he's close?" Remus asked.

Peter shrugged. "He has to be. Why wouldn't she want to go out with him?"

"She hasn't wanted to go out with him so far, what do you think will make her change her mind."

"I don't know," Peter admitted. "Why don't you ask her."

Remus was taken aback. "Me? You want me to what? Why me?"

"You know her best," Peter explained. "Sirius won't do it, and she won't talk to me. But she likes you."

"She doesn't hate me, but I'm not sure you can say that she likes me," Remus corrected.

"She calls you 'Remus' and you call her 'Lily' which is more than the rest of us can say," Peter said. "She'll listen to you."

"I don't know," Remus said reluctantly.

"I'm not asking you to ask her to go out on a date with James," Peter said. "I just want you to talk with her."

"Why?" Remus asked again. "What do you want me to say? What do you think it will accomplish?"

Peter opened his mouth, then closed it again. It was almost a minute before he answered, but Remus waited patiently for his response. "I don't know. Ask her what's so bad with James."

"You think simply asking her will make her realize she secretly loves him, only hasn't been able to figure it out despite the fact James has asked her probably a million times since fifth year?" Remus liked Peter, thought he was a good friend, but sometimes he couldn't understand the shorter boy. He was so naïve in some ways, so blind when it came to some things, particularly those things that related to James Potter.

"No, but…" Peter didn't finish the sentence, didn't seem to know how to finish the sentence. "Won't you just do it? Please, Remus? So we can figure out what to do next?"

Remus closed his eyes and wondered if he, too, wasn't suffering from the after affects of too much alcohol, or if he really just was that much of a pushover. "I'll do it. I'll talk to Lily."

* * *

**In the next chapter:**

Sirius ran into James after leaving the bathroom.

"Ugh," James said.

"Ugh," Sirius replied.

"I'm never doing that again," James swore.

"Me neither," Sirius vowed.

And they honoured their promise for ever and ever—or at least until the next Friday when Sirius discovered that Salacious Salamander, in part of their never-ending competition with their rivals, Ogden's Old, had come up with a new line of Firewhiskey, one that promised extra burn as it went down your throat—and real fires in your stomach!

The next Saturday, Sirius ran into James after leaving the bathroom.

"Ugh," James said.

"Ugh," Sirius replied.

"I'm never doing that again," James swore.

"Me neither," Sirius vowed.


	8. Letters 2

_I'm very sorry about the delay. It was a combination of real life and working out the details for the subplot, which is introduced in this chapter. Don't worry; I'm back to regularly scheduled updates. Chapter Eight will be out at the beginning of the week._

_Oh, yes. And my secret is out. As many of you have commented,so-called "in the next chapter" previews never actually take place in the next chapter; they are simply an end to the current chapter._

* * *

**Chapter Seven**

Potter,

Rumour has it you were caught in Hogsmeade on Saturday night, completely sloshed. I thought we had decided to set a better example for the rest of the students?

Strangely disappointed,  
Lily Evans

_Evans,_

_I was not caught in Hogsmeade on Saturday night, drunk or sober. Who said I was?_

_Yours truly,  
__Jas. Potter_

Potter,

Some seventh-year Slytherins. As the Head Girl, I have to investigate.

Trying to follow her duty,  
Lily Evans

_Evans,_

_Slytherins? You're believing Slytherins? You know they're out to get me. Besides, how could they have seen me in Hogsmeade if they weren't there themselves, which would be against the rules. I hope you took points. As the Head Girl, it is your duty to ensure the rules are followed, as you're so fond of pointing out to me. Said rules should be followed especially by the Slytherins._

_Sincerely yours,  
__Jas. Potter_

Potter,

I will ignore you obvious bias towards the Slytherins this time, though you really ought to learn some tolerance, in view of more pressing matters.

But really, how hard is it to answer a simple question? Were you or were you not drunk on Saturday?

Wanting a straight answer,  
Lily Evans

_Evans,_

_Didn't you just finish confessing to me that you were drinking on Friday?_

_Faithfully yours,  
__Jas. Potter_

Potter,

I thought we agreed that was a mistake that we weren't going to bring up again.

Willing to admit to a mistake if you are,  
Lily Evans

_Evans,_

_We've certainly decided and agreed upon a lot of things that I don't recall._

_Snippily yours,  
__Jas. Potter_

Potter,

What's that supposed to mean?

Genuinely confused,  
Lily Evans

_Evans,_

_Just that you keep using that phrase. Look over your letters; they're filled with "I thought we agreed" or "Hadn't we decided". Shouldn't I have some idea of these agreements?_

_Yours truly,  
__Jas. Potter_

Potter,

Is something wrong? You don't sound like yourself.

More concerned that I ought to be,  
Lily Evans

_Evans,_

_What do you mean?_

_And look who's not answering the question at hand now._

_Yours sincerely,  
__Jas. Potter_

Potter,

For one thing, you haven't been going on about the colour of my eyes, or the light of my hair, or any other of those asinine comments you always feel the need to make when you see me. There haven't been any attempts at horrid poetry, and I can't remember the last time you tried to coerce me into going on a date with you. In fact, you've been almost decent, acting like a civilized being instead of annoying git you usually are. Are you sick? Have you seen Madam Pomfrey? Despite the fact that you're trying to pick a fight with me, that is. This isn't Black, pretending to be Potter, is it?

Suspiciously yours,  
Lily Evans

_Evans,_

_No, this isn't Sirius. It's James. Have you ever tried to read his handwriting? Trust me, it's easy to tell the difference between us._

_Best regards,  
__The Real James Potter_

_PS – The light of your hair? I know I've said some pretty 'asinine' things over the years, to quote you quoting me, but your hair doesn't have light. Except for that time Sirius thought it would be a good idea to set it on fire, I mean. Sorry about that one. He got it into his head that your looks would be improved upon if your hair really was on fire instead of just having hair the colour of flame, and sometimes once he gets these ideas he… well, it's very hard to distract him from an idea once he decides something is Brilliant._

Potter,

Your handwriting isn't any better.

And apology accepted. Though you didn't need to apologize in the first place. As you said, that one was Black, not you, and I know even you can't be responsible for every single thing he does.

Lily Evans

_Evans,_

_You haven't seen Sirius' handwriting. Besides, you told me no more Quick Quotes, so what do you expect?_

_Yours truly,  
__Jas. Potter_

Potter,

You're avoiding the question again. Can't we have this conversation in person? These notes are getting to be ridiculous. I don't have all day to wait for an owl, after all.

Slightly exasperated,  
Lily Evans

_Evans,_

_If you want this conversation to be in person, why wouldn't you just come out and say it instead of sending a note re: the same?_

_Yours sincerely,  
__Jas. Potter_

Potter,

I would if I could find you. Where are you hiding away at?

Quite exasperated,  
Lily Evans

_Evans,_

_I'm not avoiding you._

_Faithfully yours,  
__Jas. Potter_

Potter,

You're avoiding me? Why?

Extremely exasperated,  
Lily Evans

_Evans,_

_Can't you read? I said I wasn't avoiding you._

_Yours faithfully,  
__Jas. Potter_

Potter,

I never mentioned anything about avoiding until you brought it up. And people don't deny avoiding someone unless they actually are. Is this about Saturday? Because, honestly, it was just some Slytherins who were stupid enough to get caught in Hogsmeade and decided that they should take you down with them. I shouldn't have brought it up in the first place.

Wishing we could speak in person,  
Lily Evans

_Evans,_

_There were a number of things that you shouldn't have brought up on Saturday at all._

_Faithfully yours,  
__Jas. Potter_

Potter,

What's that supposed to mean?

Lily Evans

_Evans,_

_Absolutely nothing. Not to change the topic or anything, has Dumbledore asked you to meet with him? Any idea what it's about?_

_Yours truly,  
__Jas. Potter_

Potter,

He didn't say anything, but… Have you read the paper?

Lily

_Evans,_

_The paper?_

_Regards,  
__Jas. Potter_

Potter,

Today's Prophet. You have seen it, haven't you?

Lily

_Evans,_

_Of course. I just wasn't sure if that was the paper you were referring to and not, say, Sirius' Treaty on the Uses and Misuses of Invisibility Cloaks, Dungbombs, Enchanted Quills and other Items as Prohibited by Filch. _

_Your**s**,  
_Jas. Potter

Potter,

Sirius' treaty on what? Please tell me you're kidding. Please tell me that isn't what all the four years are passing around and giggling over.

On second thought, don't tell me. I don't want to know. Even if it's breaking the rules, I don't think I want to know. No, I was referring to today's Prophet.

Wishing I hadn't said anything,  
Lily Evans

_Evans,_

_Don't worry; Sirius didn't break any of the rules. For once. He merely wrote about breaking the rules. The actual existence of such a document as the Treaty is well within the Hogwarts rules, he informs me. And will continue to be so until Filch or one of the other teachers learn of its existence and forbid it._

_Truly yours,  
__Jas. Potter_

Potter,

I asked you not to tell me. But never mind that. What did you think of the article in the Prophet?

Lily

_Evans,_

_It's unbelievable, of course._

_Yours truly,  
__Jas. Potter_

Potter,

You're right. Except, well, it almost is believable. I don't know. I guess I just wish I found it unbelievable.

Lily

_Evans,_

_We'll talk about the matter further during the meeting with Dumbledore. _

_Sincerely your  
__Jas. Potter_

* * *

**In the next chapter:**

_From the Desk of Jas. Potter  
_To Do:

Read the Prophet and figure out exactly what I've decided is so shocking and unbelievable so that the next time I'm around Evans, she doesn't realize I'm talking like a Fwooper.


	9. Hitting a Wall

_I have nothing to say, except to remind you not-so-subtlely that I love reviews. Thank you so much everyone that reviews. You're what keep me writing this._

**

* * *

**

**Chapter Eight**

The trick wasn't to find Lily. No, that was always the easy part. Lily was invariably in the centre of things—in the centre of class, demonstrating the correct wrist movement for Flitwick's newest charm; in the centre of the seventh year girls, gossiping and smiling with the best of them; in the centre of James and Sirius' latest prank, giving the two a tongue-lashing that James, in his twisted way, almost anticipated as much as he anticipated embarrassing the Slytherins.

No, the trick wasn't to find Lily. The trick was to find Lily on her own. That, Remus decided, as he finally found an opportunity after a day and a half of waiting for the right moment to present itself, was the real challenge.

Lily was tucked away in an almost unknown cranny of the library, and thus made a face when Remus came up to see her. "You found me," she complained.

Remus was taken aback. "I didn't know you were avoiding me."

"Not you." She brushed her hair out of her eyes now that she had stopped leaning over her parchment with a quill in hand. "People in general."

"I'm sorry. I can go away again, if you want." Remus said this more out of an expected politeness than any actual desire to leave. Actually, when he got right down to it, this probably wasn't politeness at all considering he wasn't going to leave even if she asked. Not after all the time he'd spent trying to corner Lily on her own.

Luckily, Lily didn't force his hand just yet. "No, it's fine. I could probably use a break." To prove her point, she stretched her arms above her and rolled her head, cracking a few vertebrae in her neck. Both she and Remus winced slightly at the sound.

"What can I do for you?" Lily asked. "And please tell me it has nothing to do with first years getting lost, first years getting homesick, first years being scared silly by some story a foolish fifth year, a ghost or Sirius has told them, and please, oh please do not tell me that about first years transfiguring the toilet into two-tiered spouting fountain because they lost control when someone frightened them."

Remus blinked. It was the only response he could think of to such a wish. At least the only one that didn't involve calling the speaker a liar or laughing hysterically. "Have you had a bad week?" he asked instead, trying to keep his tone sympathetic and not full of thinly disguised mirth.

Shaking her head and sending out very clear signals that she really didn't want to discus the matter further, Lily said, "They never told me that this was what being Head Girl is about. Really. I mean, how am I expected to keep up with my school work when I'm acting as mother to all the little kids _and_ make up for Potter's lack of reliability as Head Boy."

"Right. James." Remus cleared his throat, wondering the best way to approach the topic that wouldn't land the bottle of ink in his face.

"You're right," Lily sighed, causing Remus to blink again. He didn't think he'd said anything at all, let alone something to be right about. "I'm being unfair. Potter truly has amazed me by pulling his weight around in this whole Head Boy thing. You would almost think he cares about this entire school thing."

"Now, Lily, I don't think you're being fair," Remus tried.

Again, Lily surprised him. "Maybe not. I mean, he's been pretty decent about the whole thing so far this year."

Remus tried to regain control of the conversation. "Then why do you give him such a hard time?" he asked.

"Do you blame me? I mean, leaving aside he's your friend, and all that. Can you really blame me when you get right down to it? After all that he's done?"

"What, exactly, has he done?" asked Remus. "When you get right down to it?"

"What has he done?" Lily made it sound like a rhetorical question, as if the answer ought to be obvious, but Remus stared at her patiently, expecting a real answer. He'd promised Peter as much, after all.

Lily grew quiet for a few minutes, actually considering Remus' question, measuring her answer. When she did give a response, he felt as if it were real, not some flippant words thrown together because she was expected to say something, anything.

"Potter… Potter has spent two years making my life hell. I don't think we've had a real conversation since third year, since he ruins anything that resembles it by asking me out every time he sees me. As if he didn't already know the answer, as if he actually cared that I have to turn him down yet again because really, all he's doing is trying to make me miserable for whatever deluded reason he might have that I haven't reasoned out yet."

She sighed heavily, not particularly wanting to have this conversation. "I don't think it's because I'm Muggleborn. He seems to be honest enough when he says he tries not to look down on us. I mean, he does try, and that's already better than more than half of the school.

"No," Lily concluded. "Whatever reason he has for the continued humiliation, it's personal not anything to do with my blood. I can give him that. But other than that—well, it was annoying and tiresome the first three times he did it. Now it's just hell."

"You don't think he actually wants to go out with you?" Remus asked, hoping she wouldn't notice the strange pitch of his voice. He was doing his best to keep his tone calm and not betray the utter shock he felt. Whatever he thought about the entire mess, the idea that Lily thought James was toying with her for his own, indecipherable reasons never crossed his mind.

"Please," Lily said, as if Remus had asked if she didn't want to buy some swampland in Diagon Alley. "I don't get upset with him for it. Not anymore. Not really. It's his thing, I guess. Certainly better than Horace Ingersoll who hits the girls he likes before running away. Thank God I've never had to put up with something like that. I can deal with James, when you get down to it."

"But you put up with him?" Remus questioned carefully, trying not to wince.

Lily shrugged. "He's really not that bad a bloke, at least not anymore. As long as I ignore the fact that he always is pretending to ask me out, I mean. I have a sister; I'm not entirely without experience of putting up with someone who's determined to bother me for no good reason."

Remus tried to process the information he'd received, wondering why he never had bothered to have this conversation with Lily before. Probably because he, like the rest of the school other than Peter, it seemed, believed just as Lily did, when he got right down to it. James asking Lily out and Lily turning him down was part of the natural order of things. That Lily considered it to be so natural that she didn't believe James to be serious about the matter had never crossed his mind.

"Have you ever considered that he might just be completely awful at impressing a girl?" Remus asked quietly before taking leave of Lily completely.

Lily stared after him, unable to go back to her work after the turmoil his words left her in. She could understand them, individually, but together they didn't make sense. There was no way Potter was really that much of a duffer. It had to be an act. It couldn't possibly real.

It just couldn't.

* * *

**In the next chapter:**

His annoying guffaw of a laugh and Irule's horrified face was what tipped Lily off. Horace Ingersoll ran up to her, then shoved her so hard that she was knocked into the wall. Irule was torn between hexing him and seeing if Lily was injured, and the few seconds of indecision allowed the large boy to run away again.

"Are you hurt?" Irule asked, hooking her hand under Lily's elbow to help her up.

But Lily wasn't concerned. Instead, she shouted, "Damn it! It's always me! Why is it always me?"

Around the corner, Peter looked at Sirius, who was currently Polyjuiced as the sixth year Huffelpuff. "Do you think Ingersoll will ever figure out why no one ever wants to go out with him and why all the girls avoid him?"

"He hasn't yet, has he?" Sirius asked. "I just wish I could figure out a way to get this Potion to wear out faster."


	10. An Apology

_The same warning is on the prologue--I have read **Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince**. This story will be compatible with it. However, there will be no spoilers for the book, so if you haven't finished it yet, you can read this story without worrying._

_My internet... well, let's just say that it hasn't liked me much lately. That's why I'm so behind on author responses. Expect the long overdue e-mails from me over the next few days. I'm sorry about the delay!_**

* * *

**

**Chapter Nine**

It was much easier for Lily Evans to find James Potter on his own than it had been for Remus Lupin to find her, even when you factored in Sirius Black, who could usually be counted on throwing your plans off kilter, no matter what said plans might be. (Indeed, this was such a common occurrence that both students and faculty had begun to refer to it as Law of Black Luck. In a Muggle school scientific studies would have been run on the probability of the phenomenon; in Hogwarts, the students wrote it off as a side-effect of being in a magical environment—putting up with Sirius was necessary much in the same way as putting up with staircases that led to a different part of the castle on alternative Fridays, dealing with the eerie Mrs. Norris, or Peeves' very existence.) Sirius himself was quite modest about his talent. After all, it was a gift.

James was sitting by himself in a corner of the Common Room, acting like a normal student for once and actually doing his school work. None of his friends were around, for which Lily was grateful. She had already talked to Remus, Pettigrew had been giving her weird looks ever since that thing with James (whatever it was) had started earlier that week and Sirius had been giving her hateful looks ever since that thing with James (which was unfortunately all too clear) had started in fifth year.

Lily plonked herself down beside him. "I think I owe you an apology," she said as way of a greeting.

James glanced up from _Metamorphamagi: The Myths, the Mystery and the Magic_ that he was reading for extra credit in Transfiguration. "You _think_ you owe me an apology?" he asked.

"I was talking to Remus, and he was saying how I've upset you. I don't want hard feelings between us, especially now that we have to work together so much, so I thought I'd clear the air."

"So you don't know what you're apologizing for," James concluded. "That rather makes the apology useless, don't you think?"

Lily surprised them both by bursting out laughing. At James' questioning, and almost hurt look, she elaborated. "You sound like my sister. She does that sometimes with her boyfriend, when they fight. 'If you don't know what you've done wrong, I'm not about to tell you!' I guess it just always seems to be that she doesn't remember why she's mad in the first place and is pretending it's Vernon's fault."

"She does have a point," James said, obviously not wanting to make things easier for Lily by using her prompts to explain what was the matter.

Lily only laughed again. "I'm sorry. I guess if you knew her, you'd know why I found this funny. It's just the thought of the two of you agreeing on anything…" She trailed off, shaking her head and trying to hold back the tears of mirth.

"So she's like you, then?" James asked.

"No. Quite the opposite, in fact," Lily said.

"But you said that she wouldn't agree with me," James said.

"No, she wouldn't, but for other reasons than we don't agree."

"Why don't we agree?" James asked before he could stop himself.

Lily chose not to answer that question, instead continuing her previous line of thought. "You and Petunia—she's, well, a Muggle. I mean, I know she's a Muggle by definition, but when you get down to it, you could open a dictionary and look up the word, and her picture would be there to illustrate the meaning. I'm fairly certain she'd rather eat rat poison with an extra helping of cyanide than agree with a wizard on anything."

She had answered the question as it might have been, not as it was posed, but James didn't feel inclined to argue with her and instead acted as if he had really been asking the difference between himself and her sister. "She doesn't like that you're at Hogwarts?" he guessed, reading between the lines. Not that it was hard. There were pictures drawn between these lines. Captioned pictures. With blinking arrows and flashing lights.

"She doesn't think it's 'normal'," Lily told him.

"How? What?"

But Lily was shaking her head. "Don't ask. It's better not to know. Needless to say, we don't get along well. We don't get along horribly, either. I mean, we're not like Black and his family."

"I don't think anyone is like Sirius and his family," James said noncommittally. He tried to keep his tone light, not wanting to get delve into Sirius' family life for his best friend's sake, and changed the subject as quickly as he could without tipping Lily off to his intention. "Has Dumbledore talked to you about this Slytherin thing?"

Lily sat up straight, suddenly alert. "I thought we had a meeting with him in the morning." It came out more as a question, much in lines of the way Peter would sometimes say "I thought the test was next Monday" before proceeding to develop a full-blown case of panic-induced hysteria.

"We do," James answered in the same voice Remus would always use to assure Wormtail the test was next Monday and won't you please ignore James and Sirius because all they were doing was trying to rile you up and it's best not to give them anymore reason to cackle like a bunch of hyenas.

He also decided that the third tone typical in these conversations, that of Sirius' "Honestly, Wormtail, must we go through this every bloody month?" was completely unnecessary in this particular situation, no matter how funny it was in the original conversation.

So instead, James continued, "I was simply curious if Dumbledore had already talked to you, or if you had any idea what the meeting was about."

Seeming much more relaxed now, Lily slumped back down into her seat. "No, no clue. Well, unless it's about article in the Prophet, like we were talking about last night."

Suddenly, James remembered their conversation from the other night—if owling each other for five hours straight could be called a conversation. He remembered his resolve to go read the Prophet in order to discover what, in fact, Lily was referring to so that he wouldn't look like a complete berk when it became apparent he had been talking about things he didn't have a clue about.

He also remembered his trek to find the Prophet. There was usually a copy of it lying around somewhere in his dorm—James subscribed to it (rather, his parents subscribed him to it) and Remus read it.

Of course, on his trek to read the Prophet, following the Law of Black Luck, he'd been sidetracked by Sirius, who had the perfect idea on how to spend an evening. James wasn't quite sure how things had escalated, but the end result was a solemn vow between the friends never to discuss the goings on again. The evidence (a book that would have been placed in the Restricted Section had it belonged to the library, a love letter written by and for students who must have graduated almost a century beforehand and an suspiciously empty bottle of firewhiskey—suspicious only because neither James nor Sirius touched a drop of alcohol the entire night) was disposed of accordingly

So James simply smiled, albeit a tad too brightly, and said, "Right. I guess we'll just have to wait until tomorrow to see what Dumbledore has to say."

"We're fine then?" Lily asked.

James blinked, forgetting for an instance that she'd struck the conversation simply to apologize to him.

"We're fine," he lied.


	11. James' Manly Arms

**Chapter Ten**

"Couldn't you have asked Sirius to help you?" Remus complained mildly. "Or even James, for that matter. Both are much better at this sort of thing than I am."

"Sirius still won't admit that James and Lily are perfect together, and I obviously can't ask James, since he's sworn off of Lily for some stupid reason," Peter answered without taking his eyes off of the stream of students walking down the hallway. Both boys were currently crouched behind the statue of Millicent the Mad, waiting for the opportunity to carry out Peter's plan. At least, Peter was crouched behind the statue of Millicent the Mad, waiting to carry out his plan; Remus was, in actuality, crouching behind the statue of Millicent the Mad, wondering what Peter had on him that was good enough blackmail material to cause him to go along with this asinine plan.

"There might be a reason they wouldn't go along with this plan," Remus said.

"I told you that reason already," Peter answered, obstinately refusing to take a hint.

"No," Remus said patiently, "I mean that I don't think that this is going to work."

"Of course it'll work," said Peter. "It's perfect."

Perfect wasn't exactly the word Remus would use for the plan. He wouldn't even go so far as saying it was flawed, because that still would be giving too much credit to Peter's idea (although to actually voice such feelings, Remus would never dream to dare—he wouldn't want to hurt his friend's feelings). Clichéd, hackneyed and plain old corny were much better descriptives when he got right down to it.

Still, Peter seemed inordinately pleased with his idea and Remus wasn't about to crush the other boy's spirits. Instead of voicing his doubts, Remus merely said, "We'll see what happens. But don't get your hopes up."

"It's perfect," Peter repeated, a little more firmly this time.

Remus didn't have a chance to say anymore—if, indeed, he even felt it was worth his while to put effort into arguing further—because a group of girls that included Lily Evans, the object of their plan, came quite close to their hiding spot, causing Peter to hush Remus unnecessarily loudly.

"Shhhh!"

Lily stopped suddenly, her feet mere inches away from Remus' face. "What was that?"

"What was what?" asked one of the innumerable girls that always seemed to flock around Lily.

"That noise," Lily said.

"What noise?"

"Didn't you hear it?"

There were a couple of seconds of silence in which Remus could imagine the bunch of girls uneasily looking around—he himself dared not peek and see the scene for himself. He dared not to even look at Peter, whom he imagined was also trying to make himself as small and invisible as humanly possible.

When he dared to move again, he discovered that Peter had forgone the "humanly possibly" option and transformed into a rat as he often did when trying to make himself invisible. As Peter said, it worked every time—unless, of course, Sirius and James were involved, in which case it could (and had, once or twice) end with a loud shriek of "Rat!" followed by wands drawn and a curse or two hurled in poor Peter's direction. Nothing maiming or permanently debilitating, of course, but Remus knew that Peter didn't appreciate that small bit of kindness.

Miraculously, all the girls managed to stay quiet for close to a minute, straining to hear the noise Lily had mentioned. Finally, even Lily had to admit defeat.

"It's gone."

"It was probably just your imagination," said one of the girls, who Remus finally recognized as Bernice, a Ravenclaw in their year. "Or Peeves."

"Trust me," Lily said with good natured humour. "Peeves very rarely appears in my daydreams."

"How about James Potter?" Irune teased.

This time Lily answered with significantly colder tones. "I dream about Potter even less frequently. I don't have many nightmares, after all."

"No, I meant maybe you heard Potter. That's him coming this way."

Sure enough, James was heading towards them, currently completely oblivious to the girls' presence in the hall because he was too busy laughing over something or another with Sirius.

That James made his entrance with such good timing didn't surprise Remus for two reasons. The first was that he was James Potter, the king of good entrances. It was like that Muggle saying Remus' mother often used: "Speak of the devil and he shall appear." James' ego always made it so that he showed up just when people started to talk about him. Remus wasn't sure how he did it; he could only conclude that it was a gift.

The other reason that Remus wasn't surprised when James appeared was because he and Peter had set James up earlier. His arrival was the signal they had been waiting for to put the next part of their plan into action.

Peter suddenly appeared beside him, wand at the ready.

"Wait!" Remus hissed, not caring if someone overheard him this time. Peter couldn't follow through with his plan now. There was one small, yet important detail that would ruin everything with its presence.

Unfortunately, Peter neither saw that detail nor heeded Remus' warning. He muttered the words under his breath and an excellently executed Trip Jinx was hurled towards one Lily Evans. She stumbled, as expected, falling directly into the arms of one James Potter, whose skills, both of the Quidditch variety and of the anticipating-every-breath-Lily-Evans-takes variety, allowed him to move quickly enough to catch her in mid-fall, making it seem as if he had anticipated the action.

It had been Peter's plan all along, to make James seem like a hero and to allow Lily to know the pleasure of being in James' manly arms all in one fell swoop. The only problem was, people tended not to fall when they were standing still (unless they were Sirius and a bottle of Firewhiskey was involved).

It was obvious that a Trip Jinx was involved.

Unfortunately, it was just as obvious who, exactly, Lily blamed for said Trip Jinx. The yelling, protestations, screeching, outrages, cursing and hexing that came from all parties was enough to make Remus very happy that he was hidden away and therefore not at all suspected. Peter, he later learned, had turned himself into a rat for the duration of the fight.

The hallways was deserted before Remus and Peter dared to come out of their hiding spot and look at each other.

"Maybe that wasn't such a good idea," Peter said.

Remus was inclined to agree.

* * *

**In the next chapter:**

"What do you think about James rescuing some poor animal right in front of Lily's nose? Do you think that will win her over?" It was obvious that Peter had put a lot of thought into this idea. A lot of thought, and a lot of ink smudged all over his face.

"That sounds like a good idea," Remus said sarcastically. He wanted nothing further to do with the matter, not after the disaster of Peter's last plan. "How about a rat? Being saved from Filch's cat?"

Peter glared daggers at him. "Hey!"


End file.
